1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a method and system for retrieving data, for example from a data base, and for allowing a user to selectively view the data based on interactive queries.
2. Description of the Related Art
At present, when a user wishes to analyze the data in a data base, he faces the tedious task of entering a series of search parameters via a screen of input parameters. At times, the various queries must be linked using Boolean operators, and changing one parameter or operator may often necessitate changing many other less crucial parameters so as to keep them within the logical range of the input data set. Similar difficulties are now also arising when a user or a search engine scans many Internet sites to match certain criteria.
Furthermore, the concept of "analyzing" the data in a data base usually entails determining and examining the strength of relationships between one or more independent data characteristics and the remaining characteristics. This, in turn, leads to an additional difficulty--one must decide what is meant by the "strength" of a relationship how to go about measuring this strength. Often, however, the user does not or cannot know in advance what the best measure is.
One common measure of relational strength is statistical correlation as determined using linear regression techniques. This relieves the user of the responsibility for deciding on a measure, but it also restricts the usefulness of the analysis to data that happens to fit the assumptions inherent in the linear regression technique itself. The relational information provided by linear regression is, for example, often worse than useless for a bi-modal distribution (for example, with many data points at the "high" and "low" ends of a scale, but with few in the "middle") since any relationship indicated will not be valid and may mislead the user.
What is needed is a system that can take an input data set, select suitable (but user-changeable), software-generated query devices, and display the data in a way that allows the user to easily see and interactively explore potential relationships within the data set. The query system should also be dynamic such that it allows a user to select a parameter or data characteristic of interest and then automatically determines the relationship of the selected parameter with the remaining parameters. Moreover, the system should automatically adjusts the display so that the data is presented logically consistently. This invention makes this possible.